Lobbying as a profession is where things take a turn for the worse. Elected officials are paid to represent everyone, which requires hearing from many voices; not only their friends and those paid for access.
>not only their friends and those paid for access.
How does the professionalization of lobbying imply either of these? The latter is clearly about campaign contributions, and the former is going to happen regardless of whether there are professional lobbyists or not (unless you think that representatives shouldn't have friends).
To me, the point is that the current environment creates a problematic asymmetry between a small subset of interested parties (lobbyists and friends) and the group that is arguably most important: the representative's constituents.
Professional lobbying is almost universally backed by business interests, which often have no alignment whatsoever with the broader interests of constituents, and has no equalizing opposite force representing those constituents.
In other words, if I want to become a "professional lobbyist" fighting for the needs of a community, the playing field is heavily slanted towards businesses/organizations with the money to buy the necessary influence.
Campaign contributions are certainly a major part of this, and contribution rules would go a long way towards addressing this. But contributions aren't the only story, and professional lobbying still contributes to the asymmetry in its current form.
If professional lobbying starts to meaningfully include groups that do so on behalf of "normal people", it becomes easier to argue that lobbying isn't the problem. That's not the current state of affairs, and it's unclear if it can/would be merely because of changes to campaign contribution rules.
>Professional lobbying is almost universally backed by business interests, which often have no alignment whatsoever with the broader interests of constituents, and has no equalizing opposite force representing those constituents.
In other words, well resourced parties (ie. businesses) have more resources to do stuff, like trying to influence politicians. I'm not denying this. But going back to the original question, does that mean we should ban any attempts at influencing politicians?
> I'm not denying this. But going back to the original question, does that mean we should ban any attempts at influencing politicians?
This sets up a binary position that doesn't need to exist. I don't think "ban any attempts at influencing politicians" is what I took away from the GP's comment/suggestion, nor do I think this is the automatic outcome of rules that restrict business interests.
What I took away was something like this: the current environment involves obviously inflated influence from a subset of well-funded groups, and that won't change without changes to laws. GP presented an idea that would restrict that influence, but this is not synonymous with the binary outcome "ban all attempts at influencing politicians", nor do I think such a goal would even make sense, because what is the purpose of a representative if not to be be influenced by their constituents? The real question is whether or not it's acceptable that influence scales primarily based on wealth/friendship, and what changes we can make to level the playing field.
I don't know if GP's $0.02 are the right policy positions, but I also don't think holding those positions equates to the binary position.
> Representatives have to put the collective voices of their constituents above their friends. Otherwise WTF are they paid to do?
Right, but why does the professionalization of lobbying imply politicians would be "hearing [...] only their friends and those paid for access"? I agree that it's certainly a possibility, and you'd be a better lobbyist if you had exclusive access, but that's like saying having employees own stocks imply insider trading (ie. it's certainly a possibility, and you'd be a better trader if you had insider information).
While lobbyists, friends, and campaign contributors aren't to only voices representatives will hear, they're more likely to get their desired outcomes -- even if it contradicts what's best for the whole. Incentives are stacked against the poor and less well connected.
This disdain for lobbyists is ironically giving more corporate lobbyists even more power. Whether you like it or not lobbying is here to stay because that's the only way a handful for generalists in the US can write policy related to the million aspects of modern society. Voters want the government to give out free vaccines and antiviral medication, but do you think the average Senator, who spends 90% of their time politicking and virtue signalling, knows anything about pharmaceutical companies, drug authorization, distribution, etc? They outsource most of that work to lobbyists who are subject-matter experts, who are obviously biased towards their clients.
The only way to counter the effects of corporate lobbying is more grass-roots lobbying and general awareness of policy by voters in general. The blanket contempt people have for lobbying these only serves to discourage the type of lobbying that was instrumental in for the passage of Civil Rights and environmental legislation decades ago.
